


Boxers

by BeneficialAddiction



Series: Boxers, Briefs, and Other Shorts [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Boxers, Boxing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 07:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10552734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeneficialAddiction/pseuds/BeneficialAddiction
Summary: Clint boxes. Phil learns why.





	

Barton boxes. 

It's one of the less popular forms of physical fitness and combat training inside the halls of SHIELD, a bit too structured, a bit too limited in what's allowed, but he doesn't neglect his martial arts or forget his dirty street tricks, so his instructors and his handlers allow it. He's as good at it as he is at anything else, so no one questions the reason he attacks the bags, slips into the ring with anyone he can convince to go up against him. It channels the anger the young agent carries around on his shoulders like the world's biggest chip, focuses the hate and dampens the rebellious bucking of authority that has made him such a handful for any senior agent who's had to deal with him. 

That is until he gets sent on a milk run with Senior Agent Phillip J Coulson. 

The op goes belly-up before it even starts, and while there's a record amount of chatter and flirtation over the comms between barked orders and rapid gunfire, handler and asset achieve their mission goal and pull their fellow agents out of the fire with minimum blood loss and destruction of property. As soon as they get back Agent Coulson puts Agent Barton in for a commendation and a promotion that allows the young man to skip three security levels, and takes the archer on as his very first specialist in six years. He provides him with a custom bow, a rather extravagant gift, and together they quickly become one of the most efficient teams in the organization. 

Slowly the anger begins to fade away and the problems with authority practically disappear overnight, Barton becomes less sullen and suspicious, less intentionally obnoxious, and his natural curiosity and cheerfulness begin to shine through. He starts to laugh, to smile more, and his tricks go from malicious to playful. He stops hiding his intelligence and hoarding food, starts actively seeking out new experiences, learns how to pilot the quinjets and takes courses in strategy and mechanics. He blossoms under Agent Coulson's faith and patient guidance, and Agent Coulson falls just a little bit in love. 

He still boxes, and Agent Coulson doesn't understand it until months have passed, until Agent Coulson has become Boss and Sir and every so often Phil, until Agent Barton has become Clint and Hawkeye. Until they're not so guarded against the other, each for their own reasons, until the professional becomes a little bit personal and they start to share their lives outside of SHIELD as well as the work. Until they've started having meals together off base, until they've seen each other's apartments, until they've become friends more than they are colleagues. 

It's not dating – they're both adamant about that, even though they both secretly wish it was. 

It's trust, more than anything else, belief and fondness and an importance to the other that they've never particularly felt before. 

So Clint takes Phil along one Saturday afternoon, to the shitty little gym on the corner of State and 28th, the quasi-legal, semi-professional boxing ring that is seedier than it ought to be in the middle of the afternoon. He leaves Phil on the dented steel bleachers and disappears into the back, only to emerge into the ring some twenty minutes later when they announce his name over the crackly, static-filled stereo-speakers. 

He's glorious and terrifying in the same moment, dressed in boxing shoes and a pair of cobalt blue shorts, his massive shoulders and broad chest bare to the crowd, and even from his seat Phil can see the tension in his muscles, the way he leans forward on the balls of his feet, eager, hungry. The bell clangs and the archer Phil knows disappears to be replaced by the boxer he's never known, a harder man, a harsher man. His brow seems heavier, his eyes hooded, all his lithe grace and flexibility gone, and very, very suddenly Phil understands. 

This is who Clint might have been, who he would have been if SHIELD hadn't stepped in, if Phil hadn't caught up with him that night in the rain and put a bullet in his leg. This is a different Clint, one surviving on sheer size and strength, bloody brutality. This is a brute, a thug, a heavy-fisted bastard taking out all of his anger at the world on his opponent. The boxing is Clint's way of exorcising that ghost, that memory of what might have been, and perhaps a way of honoring it too. 

Phil has never been one for this kind of bloodshed, but he stays, and he watches, and he acknowledges what it means that Clint is sharing this part of himself so openly, showing Phil the tender, vulnerable underside of his belly. He watches Clint take his opponent apart one blow at a time until a clever uppercut knocks him out flat and the coach-cum-referee raises his arm in victory. He waits while Clint changes, then walks with him in silence back to his apartment, and when they get there he sits the man down on a stool and packs bags of frozen peas onto his bruised and swollen knuckles. 

Clint offers no explanation for his actions – either the boxing itself or for bringing Phil along – and for his part Phil doesn't ask. He doesn't need to to recognize the afternoon for what it was, one final confession on the younger man's part in a silent plea for understanding. It was a leap of faith, and he is helpless to do anything but take his own. 

Lifting Clint's chin, he presses a kiss to his bruised lips, and smiles when he's kissed right back. 

He doesn't mind that Clint's a boxer. 

He'll never ask him to stop. 

But he promises himself then and there that he's going to spend the rest of his life proving to him that that is not all he is.


End file.
